MarTech Conference: ‘Beyond Advertising’ Social and Commerce Role Grows

MarTech –Marketing Technology — takes all the social and commerce developments we’ve sometimes called “Web 3.0,” and put them under one roof. It takes into account not only ads, click-throughs and promotion — AdTech — but content and experience, social and relationships, commerce and sales, data and management. What does it change? Potentially everything.

Indeed, Brinker notes that there are now over 5,000 MarTech firms and solutions, up 40 percent since 2016. MarTech firms are attracting record amounts of funding, with its growth rates eclipsing other hot tech fields such as cyber-security, e-commerce, Infrastructure, Big Data and FinTech.

More than 21 percent of these firms are calling themselves “platforms“ because they integrate so many features and partners, adds Brinker. Most are cloud-based SaaS programs (Software as a Service), and oriented towards agile marketing.

Brinker notes that these MarTech firms “fill in the blanks” between the IBMs, Oracles and Microsofts. They also represent “thousands of niche innovators, vertical specialists and new challengers.” Most are startups (48.8%) and SMBs (33.2%), giving them the ability to quickly improvise based on marketing trends and conditions.